In the previous post, we witnessed the almost complete decipherment of Linear A tablet HT 95 (Haghia Triada). Now we are presented with a full decipherment down to the last word of HT 86 (Haghia Triada), which is practically a mirror-image of HT 95. This is the first time ever I have succeeded in deciphering two almost identical Linear A tablets inscribed entirely in Old Minoan (OM), the original Minoan substrate language. This constitutes a major advancement in the decipherment of Linear A, all the more so, since DAME & SARU appear on other Linear A tablets from Haghia Triada. So we are making at least some progress in the decipherment of the original Minoan substrate language, Old Minoan (OM).

Linear A words and ideograms for cereals + general Linear A ideograms:

The chart above lists almost all of the Linear A words and ideograms for cereals + general Linear A ideograms. The Linear A Semitic words and ideograms for cereals are identical to those found on Linear A tablets HT 86 and HT 95 (Haghia Triada). Simply refer to the previous posts on these two highly significant Linear A tablets to confirm these interpretations. Also found in this chart are general Linear A ideograms, the majority of which are identical to their Linear B counterparts, which should come as no surprise to anyone, considering that the Linear B syllabary is merely a refinement of the Linear A syllabary.

Pigeons played a central role some 1,500 years ago in transforming the Byzantine Negev into a flourishing garden, according to a new study conducted at the Zinman Institute of Archeology at the University of Haifa and published Wednesday in the journal PlosOne.

The study, which focused on the ancient settlements of Shivta and Sa’adon, found archaeological evidence that the Byzantines in the Negev did not raise their pigeons for food, but to fertilize the dry loess soil and making it more suitable for intensive agriculture.

Loess is made up of fragment of geological detritus, formed by the accumulation of wind-blown dust. But despite its lowly origins, loess tends to develop into very rich soils. Under appropriate climatic conditions, it forms some of the most agriculturally productive terrain in the world.

“The pigeon droppings are rich in phosphorus, potassium and nitrogen, which are essential for agriculture and lacking in the loess soil of the Negev,” the researchers noted, adding that “the fact that the pigeon bones we found are much smaller than pigeons grown for meat, along with the nesting materials discovered in the trenches and the location of these within the agricultural fields, indicate that the pigeons were grown without significant human intervention, with people mainly providing them with protection.”

In recent years, a large-scale study has been conducted in the Byzantine Negev communities, led by Prof. Guy Bar-Oz of the University of Haifa, in an attempt to understand, among other things, how the Byzantines managed to maintain an extensive farming system in the desert about 1,500 years ago, and what caused these thriving communities to be abandoned overnight.

In a study published several months ago, the research group presented significant archaeological evidence of the extent of agriculture in the Negev at the time, using the bones of a rodent (Marion), which lives only in more humid environments and is not found in desert.

Now, Dr. Nimrod Marom of the University of Haifa and Tel Hai College, together with Prof. Bar-Oz and Dr. Yotam Tepper of the Institute of Archeology at the University of Haifa and Dr. Baruch Rosen of the Volcani Institute, are focusing on the study of the bones of pigeons found in coops in the agricultural areas near the Byzantine settlements.

According to the researchers, pigeon droppings are renowned to be a source of important minerals for agriculture, such as phosphorus, potassium and nitrogen, and in many areas of the world it was customary until recently to use them to improve and fertilize the soil. However, throughout history, pigeons have also been raised for meat. In order to determine main use of the pigeons in the Negev Byzantine colonies, the researchers examined the pigeon bones found in the coops, as well as the chemical composition of the droppings themselves.

The large amount of bones found in the excavations allowed the researchers to identify the average length of the wing, the body structure, and the characteristics of the skull of the pigeons from the Byzantine period, compared to the bones of pigeons of different races from modern times.

The work was based, among other things, on comparing the pigeons from the Negev to the pigeons collected and classified by the father of evolutionary theory Charles Darwin himself. Their bones are stored in the British Museum.

The researchers’ most important discovery was that the pigeons from the Byzantine period were small, muscular and “athletic,” and no different in size from Darwin’s wild pigeons. According to Dr. Marom, a smaller body size is not only a clear indication of the pigeons in question having less meat on their bones, but that they also had a faster metabolism. Simply put: smaller ions produce more guano relative to the food they consume.

The chemical tests conducted in the laboratory showed that the droppings are indeed rich in nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

“In addition to this fact, the coops’ location, in an agricultural area and away from the settlements, strengthens the hypothesis that the pigeons were grown in the coops to produce high quality manure intended to improve the loess soil of the desert,” the researchers concluded.

“The pigeons from Shivta could fly freely and get their food themselves, the guano that was collected on the floor of the coops was used to fertilize fruit trees and vines in the local vineyards and orchards. In addition, we discovered inside the coops a rich botanical finding that included vines, dates, olives, peaches and a variety of wild plants, all scraps of food the pigeons ate,” they added, suggesting “this is additional evidence that the Negev in the Byzantine period was green and blooming.”

UNIVERSITY OF HUDDERSFIELD—By analyzing a prehistoric site in the Libyan desert, a team of researchers from the universities of Huddersfield, Rome and Modena & Reggio Emilia has been able to establish that people in Saharan Africa were cultivating and storing wild cereals 10,000 years ago. In addition to revelations about early agricultural practices, there could be a lesson for the future, if global warming leads to a necessity for alternative crops.

The importance of the find came together through a well-established official collaboration between the University of Huddersfield and the University of Modena & Reggio Emilia.

The team has been investigating findings from an ancient rock shelter at a site named Takarkori in south-western Libya. It is desert now, but earlier in the Holocene age[our present age], some 10,000 years ago, it was part of the “green Sahara” and wild cereals grew there. More than 200,000 seeds – in small circular concentrations – were discovered at Takarkori, which showed that hunter-gatherers developed an early form of agriculture by harvesting and storing crops.

But an alternative possibility was that ants, which are capable of moving seeds, had been responsible for the concentrations. Dr Stefano Vanin, the University of Huddersfield’s Reader in Forensic Biology and a leading entomologist in the forensic and archaeological fields, analyzed a large number of samples, now stored at the University of Modena & Reggio Emilia. His observations enabled him to demonstrate that insects were not responsible and this supports the hypothesis of human activity in collection and storage of the seeds.

The investigation at Takarkori provides the first-known evidence of storage and cultivation of cereal seeds in Africa. The site has yielded other key discoveries, including the vestiges of a basket, woven from roots, that could have been used to gather the seeds. Also, chemical analysis of pottery from the site demonstrates that cereal soup and cheese were being produced.

A new article that describes the latest findings and the lessons to be learned appears in the journal Nature Plants. Titled Plant behaviour from human imprints and the cultivation of wild cereals in Holocene Sahara, it is co-authored by Anna Maria Mercuri, Rita Fornaciari, Marina Gallinaro, Savino di Lernia and Dr Vanin.

One of the article’s conclusions is that although the wild cereals, harvested by the people of the Holocene Sahara, are defined as “weeds” in modern agricultural terms, they could be an important food of the future.

“The same behavior that allowed these plants to survive in a changing environment in a remote past makes them some of the most likely possible candidates as staple resources in a coming future of global warming. They continue to be successfully exploited and cultivated in Africa today and are attracting the interest of scientists searching for new food resources,” state the authors.

Research based on the findings at Takarkori continues. Dr Vanin is supervising PhD student Jennifer Pradelli – one of a cohort of doctoral candidates at the University of Huddersfield funded by a £1 million award from the Leverhulme Trust – and she is analyzing insect evidence in order to learn more about the evolution of animal breeding at the site.

Cornell University is working on ways to help supply meet demand.
JILLIAN KRAMER July 21, 2017

It turns out America’s taste for grains is reach far beyond white and wheat flour. A recent shift toward alternatives to traditional grains has opened up our interest in exotic and ancient grains, helping to land emmer and einkorn on our plates.
According to marketing and economic analyses by Cornell University researchers, demand for specialty grains—grains that reach beyond wheat, rye, barely, and even quinoa—is so strong it’s led restaurants across the country to work them onto their menus. And patrons, the researchers found, are more than willing to pay a higher price for these ancient grains.
The university names Gramercy Tavern in Manhattan as prime example of a restaurant that is embracing consumer demand. In the past, that restaurant’s rotating menu has included items such as “roasted beets and kale salad with einkorn and candied pistachio,” while national chains, such as Brio, is working farro—or emmer—onto their everyday menus. Next up, Gramercy Tavern says it will source an ancient spring emmer that can be ground and used to make pasta. Funnily enough, its manager, Jenny Jones, worked on Cornell’s project.

Consumer tastes are changing,” according to Mark Sorrells, who led a Cornell University project investigating which ancient and heritage wheat varieties are most adapted for Northeastern and north-central climates. “They are interested in local and flavorful food products, and farmers are looking for value-added crops to sell for higher prices.” Heck, even Cheerios is getting in on the ancient grains action.
But going to forward-thinking restaurants and cereal companies aren’t the only way to get your hands (or mouth) on ancient grains. Farmers markets are also embracing the trend. “Every year, we’ve seen things grow exponentially,” June Russell, the manager of farm inspections and strategic development at New York City’s Greenmarket, told the university. “Demand is building, and that’s helping to drive more acres getting planted and some infrastructure development.” At Greenmarket 14 different kinds of wheat, plus emmer and einkorn are available today.
To help those suppliers meet the demand, part of Cornell’s project is identifying and cultivating anvient and heirloom grains that can be grown in America’s heartland. Which means, yes, even more eateries (and breakfast cereal companies) will be able to experiment with these everything-old-is-new-again ingredients.

Compelling archaeological evidence shows that the Neolithic people of Boncuklu developed farming by themselves, not from migrants, but their neighbors in Pinarbasi would have none of it

Remains of a Neolithic home in Boncuklu, Turkey, some 10,000 years ago. Prof. Douglas Baird

When humans figured out how to farm food rather than spear or collect it is fiercely debated. So is how agricultural knowledge spread. Now a paper published this week suggests that hunter-gatherers on the Anatolian plateau in Turkey started farming 10,000 years ago by learning from the neighbors rather than from, say, migrants swarming in with hoes in hand.

Until now farming had been assumed to have spread through migration, explains the paper published this week in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. But evidently there were villages that rejected the newfangled sow-and-grow techniques.

Let’s start with the village of hunter-gatherers called Boncuklu. It and similar communities initiated (started) farming in central Anatolia some 10,000 years ago by adopting crops from areas to their south and east, Prof. Douglas Baird of the University of Liverpool tells Haaretz.

At Boncuklu, the researchers found stone tools different from the Levantine style. They also found burned seeds and remains of wheat chaff – and they found weeds known to have plagued early farming sites.

The abundance of the opportunistic pests suggests they flourished as the ancients cultivated their crops. Similar evidence of proto-weeds was used in Israel to demonstrate early cultivation as much as 23,000 years ago near the Kinneret – the Sea of Galilee.

The Anatolian plateau folk seem also to have begun adopting the sheep and more commonly, the goat, the archaeologists deduced from analysis of bones. This seems to be closer to when livestock were domesticated – though each species was evidently domesticated at somewhat different times in different places.

Baird agrees with the consensus that cultivation of plants began in the Fertile Crescent, including the Levant and northern Mesopotamia, and the Zagros Mountains of today’s Iran. Only later would it reach

central Turkey, he says, though adds: “Animal herding may well be a rather different situation.”

The clue of the nonexistent villages

The evidence that farming wasn’t brought to central Anatolia by migrants but developed among the indigenous population relies on analysis of stone tools and DNA, Baird explains.

Boncuklu is just one of several central Anatolian sites that have undergone archaeological exploration and analysis. All had the same indigenous material culture, especially stone tools, and were clearly part of a local tradition extending back 5,000 years earlier, Baird says.

This central Anatolian material culture is not at all like that of the early farming communities in northern Syria or southeast Turkey.

Also, if farmers had migrated to the plateau and colonized it, their remains likely would have turned up in the future. “Since we are largely talking settled village communities, you would expect to see their sites in the archaeological record, exactly as we do see with the colonization of Cyprus in the early Neolithic,” Baird says.

Which brings us to genetics. “In addition, the ancient DNA evidence now clearly shows that there is a distinctive local gene pool in the early Neolithic at places like Boncuklu, different from the genetics of Levantine Neolithic populations,” he says.

Moreover, this hunter-gatherer-turned-farming population would live on. The team discovered that the Neolithic Anatolian gene pool contributed substantially to later Neolithic populations in central and western Anatolia and indeed to the first farmers of southeast Europe, Baird says. “So I think we can say that there weren’t lots of Levantine migrants running around in central Anatolia at the beginnings of the Neolithic there,” he adds.

Signs of prehistoric ‘trade’

So in short, weeds and wheat suggest the good burghers of Bocuklu, who lived in mud-brick homes, may have still subsisted mainly from hunting and gathering, but were starting to farm 10,000 years ago. And analysis of stone tools and genetics suggests these people picked up the knack rather than had the knowledge imported from even earlier farmers in the Fertile Crescent.

Farming know-how may have come with prehistoric “trading” – the exchange of materials, artifacts and even possibly people. Trading brides seems to have been not rare, from antiquity to this day.

“We have evidence, for example, of obsidian moving from central Anatolia to the Levant being exchanged between communities, and Mediterranean seashells used as beads coming from the south coast of Turkey onto the Anatolian plateau,” Baird says. “We are potentially talking about something akin to trade but without the mercantile/commercial associations of the term. Exchange may have been as much about building social relationships as it was about acquiring materials.”

Still, we can’t even guess how close the communities from which agriculture spread to central Anatolia may have been; our knowledge of early prehistoric sites in these areas is scanty, Baird says.

One unexpected deduction is that the people of central Anatolia seem to have found this lifestyle convenient.

“Unexpectedly, this low-level food production persisted for at least five centuries. Archaeologists usually consider these kinds of food-production systems to be short-lived and transitional, but our research suggests a stable and persistent use of crops and herd animals as a minor part of the economy for a long time. This does not fit existing theory,” says Andrew Fairbairn, the project’s co-director and an associate professor at the University of Queensland.

Farming is for little people?

Fun fact: Just 30 kilometers from Boncuklu lay the contemporary prehistoric hamlet of Pinarbasi, which Baird excavated in 2003 and 2004. The Pinarbasis would have none of this farming frippery, it seems.

“Evidence suggests these communities resisted the adoption of farming and maintained a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, showing the spread of agriculture beyond the Fertile Crescent was neither uniform nor inevitable,” the team wrote.

What? No evidence of farming was found at Pinarbasi. “They must have known about it but decided not to adopt it,” Baird says.

That may not have been a good choice. Boncuklu seems to have survived at least 500 years after Pinarbasi, Baird adds – and its people may be with us to this very day.

“We think that at least elements of the Boncuklu community continued to exist in the region, contributing population to the large site at Catalhoyuk, which is only 10 kilometers away, that follows on immediately after Boncuklu is abandoned,” he says. “People at Catalhoyuk have a lot of domestic and ritual practices very similar to those we see at Boncuklu.”

How many people are we talking about, anyway? Boncuklu and Pinarbasi each probably had between 50 to 150 people at any one time, though obviously it would have varied, Baird notes. And one group seems to have survived, while one may not have.

In other words, while the desultory farming taking place in early Boncuklu was not a major economic activity, it was a local development and may have had enormous consequences for posterity.

The research was conducted by an international team led by Baird and Fairburn with Assistant Professor Gokhan Mustafaoglu and included researchers from Bournemouth University, University College London, the University of Reading, Cornell University, Middle Eastern Technical University Ankara, Trakya University, Bulent Ecevit University Zonguldak, Peking University and Harvard University, as well as the universities of Liverpool and Queensland.

The 4,000-year-old complex may have been used to house important officials visiting from the royal capital in Memphis.

The excavation site at Tell Edfu (with the temple of Horus and the modern town of Edfu in the background)G Marouard/University of Chicago

The excavation site at Tell Edfu (with the temple of Horus and the modern town of Edfu in the background)G Marouard/University of Chicago

Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered two large buildings that they believe may have been the earliest major structures in the Tel Edfu region. Led by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, researchers found the structures while engaged in a long-term dig at the site located on the west bank of the Nile River.

Located 400 miles south of Cairo, the well-preserved buildings date back around 2400-2350 BCE in the late Fifth Dynasty of Egypt and indicate a turning point in the pharaoh’s interest in developing provincial regions outside of the major cities.

The large complex may have been used to accommodate important officials from the capital Memphis, who visited the area to oversee mining of precious metals and gems from the surrounding deserts. Archaeologists have been able to identify that parts of the structure were used for making beer and bread as well as for smelting copper.

“It’s a wonderful find because we have so little information about this era of settlement in the southern provinces,” Nadine Moeller, associate professor of Egyptian archaeology, who leads the excavation together with Oriental Institute research associate Gregory Marouard, said. “We don’t know any such similar complex for the Old Kingdom.”

The Oriental Institute has been conducting excavations at Tel Edfu for the past 16 years, and late last year discovered two other mud structures that may have been used as an administrative complex. The buildings which were discovered in December 2017 were surrounded by open courtyards and workshops. The complex itself had storage spaces where over 200 broken clay sealings used to mark boxes, containers and letters were discovered.

“It’s just about this time that the Egyptian royalty, until then focused on the northern area directly around the capital Memphis, began to expand its reach after a period of contraction during the fourth and much of the fifth dynasties,” Moeller said. “This is a first sign that the ancient city of Edfu was evolving into an important departure point for large expeditions leaving for the Eastern desert regions, and possibly the Red Sea shore, located about 125 miles to the east.”

Researchers believe the buildings may also have had religious or cult ties, given their proximity to a temple 20 yards away.

While archaeologists continue to identify and study the urban planning of the region, they are puzzled by the level of preservation of the structures. Unlike most other sites that were raided for their bricks, the eight-foot thick walls of this complex were never recycled. Additionally, given the scarcity of wood in Egypt, the entrance door was also left intact.

Another subject of interest is the architectural style used. The largest building in the area has outer façades with a very distinct slope, a style that was not popular in ancient Egypt.

“It’s very well-constructed and so the slope is certainly intentional, which highlights the architectural peculiarity of this monument,” Marouard said. “We don’t know of any other structure within an urban context in Egypt that looks like this.”